FROM NAXALBARI TO OPERATION KAGAR: HOW POLITICS, REPRESSION AND SURRENDER ENDED INDIA'S MAOIST INSURGENCY

In October 2025, Modi said that India was on the verge of eradicating Naxal-Maoist terror and that the number of affected districts had dropped from 125 a decade earlier to just 11. He credited this success to the valour and courage of security forces, noting that many roads, schools and hospitals have been built in regions once dominated by Maoists.

- TDG NETWORK

Maoism in India refers to a Iong-running left-wing insurgency that seeks to overthrow the existing state through what it calls a “people's war”.

‘The movement draws ideological inspiration from the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, but it emerged from the specific social, political and economic conditions of post-independence India. The ideology is expressed today through the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI-Maoist) and its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army. Indian Maoists - often called Navalites after the village of Naxalbari - operate mainly in the mineral-rich, forested belt of Central and Eastern India known as the Red Corridor. The conflict has caused more than 12,000 deaths since the late 1960s and has been labelled by successive Indian leaders as one of the country’s greatest internal-security challenges.

HOW MAOIST IDEOLOGY ENTERED INDIA

Communist ideas reached India during the early 20th century when Indian revolutionaries and returning expatriates absorbed Marxist writings and Soviet revolutionary literature. The Communist Party of India (CPI) was founded in 1925 and supported anti-colonial agitation and workers’ strikes. The young party saw itself as part of an international proletarian movement and maintained ties with the Soviet Union, adopting strategies that emphasised class struggle. Communists joined the mainstream nationalist struggle but began to diverge from Mohandas Gandhi's nonviolence when the Non-Cooperation Movement ended.